Peppero Day: a.k.a. National Love for Pocky Day

While Canada and some other Western countries have designated Nov. 11th to be Rememberance Day, Nov. 11th takes on a completely different meaning in Korea. It's called Peppero Day, which pretty much translates to a national love for Pocky (the pretzel stick snacks that are usually dipped in chocolate) day. Basically, it's a giant marketing scheme for people to buy Pocky, and it's worked...

The premise of this day is based on nothing more the amusing fact that Nov. 11th is numerically written as 11/11, which looks like a bunch of sticks. And since Pocky also looks like a stick and serves as a nice chocolatey snack, it somehow turned into a Valentine's Day-esque buy-Pocky-for-others-day.

Of course, the Pocky people have prepared "special" Pocky packages to celebrate. Everywhere you go, you'll see boxes of giant Pocky the size of your arm, Pocky boxes wrapped in baskets with stuffed teddy bears inside, and individually wrapped Pocky sticks with hearts printed on them. It's everything would you expect from Valentine's except instead of all different kinds of chocolate, it's pretty much only Pocky.

It's pretty interesting seeing a sort of Valentine's in Feb., but hey, I'm not complaining... I got some nice goodies from my kids :D

Trick-or-Treating in My Office

Here in Korea, all the kids know of or have heard of Halloween, but no one really celebrates it. I think their English academies do some activity or another to tell them about Halloween, but that's it. So I decided to let my kids experience trick-or-treating. For the entire week leading up to Halloween, I told all my classes about the history of Halloween, how kids celebrate it in America nowadays, and I told them that if they came to my office afterschool on the 30th and said "Trick or treat", I would give them candy. I didn't really know how many would actually remember or show up, but tt turned out to be the cutest thing...

Minutes before I even finished my last class on Friday, I could already here clamoring in the hallway, and the moment I opened to door, they all shouted trick or treat in unison. It was adorable. All my third graders, who are the cutest things, were there with the biggest smiles.

So basically almost all my kids came. One kid even drew some makeup on his face to look scary, lol. And even the ones who I swear NEVER pay attention to me in class came and who they hate English and never say a word in class unless forced, all managed to remember trick or treat.

It was really funny because I have this one sixth-grader who thinks he's super cool. He always dresses really grown up and tries to act all cool and mature. Well, he came too which suprised both me and my co-teacher. And then two minutes later, he came again and tried to cover his face with his arm as if we wouldn't recognize him, lol. It was good to see the childish side of even the "coolest" kid in school.

But the one kid who by far takes the card for being the funniest was this one weird kid. I don't really understand him cuz he acts a bit odd and he never responds to you but he's an interesting fella. Well, he came with his skeleton hoodie (In Korea, they have these awesome hoodies where they zip all the way up to your forehead and they come in Mario or skeleton prints on them, very cute). Anyways, he came in his skeleton hoodie, but he came with it zipped all the way to his forehead. He stuck out his arms for candy, and I couldn't help but laugh. The really funny part though was that when he turned to leave, he didn't unzip his hoodie, so he actually ran into the wall and fell on the ground. It was the funniest thing...

My Favorite Class :D

Fridays are my longest days. I have to teach 6 hours instead of my normal 4, but I did luck out in that my favorite class is my last class of the week. So thankfully, I get to end on a good note after being exhausted from the week. They're so enthusiastic and fun that it makes my Fridays fun.

The downside of this though is that the kids are very perceptive, and they know when they're my favorites, which makes it much harder to get them to behave.

Take this one kid. He's so funny. Everything from the way he looks at you to the way he talks just makes you laugh. I try to make eye-contact with all the students when I'm talking, but I have to avoid his face sometimes because every time I look at his face, I just can't help but laugh. I try not to but I can't seem to help it. Unfortunately, not only does he know this but he also sits right in the front row, so he constantly tries to get my attention. And of course he doesn't take me seriously when I try to discipline him, but what can you do?

Worse though, is this other kid in the class. I don't know if he's the class leader or something, but he's very confident and he seems to be the popular kid of the class. He probably has the best English in the class, so I noticed him from the first time I taught this class because he was one of the few students who actually answered me. Later, I saw that he does Tae Kwon Do (he was play challenging his friends with some kickes and punches during break), so naturally, he became one of my favorites.

He participates a lot during the activities and even helps me sometimes when I have trouble communicating to the other students, but the unfortunate part though is that he can get quite rowdy. He knows he's smart and he knows his English is good, so when he gets bored with the slow pace of the class, he either talks with the people around him or he makes faces in his seat. (He even strikes an occasional pose, which I'm sure he thinks makes him look so cool.) I try to get him to behave, but he also knows that he's one of my favorites, so listens for like a second before goofing off again. Once when I was trying to get him to stop messing around with his neighbor today, he had the audacity to wink at me!! Here he is, this sixth grade kid, thinks he's just that cool! I didn't know what to do, but I couldn't help but laugh at his boldness.

So even though these kids don't take me seriously, they're super fun. Overall, they turned an exhausting morning into a fun Friday afternoon :D

Pop Stars in My Own Classroom...

So today, we did a warm-up activity where we played clips of popular Korean pop songs, and they had to practice saying whose song it was. I expected the kids to enjoy this and thought the girls would sing along. But it turns out that the two kids who enjoyed this activity the most were two skinny little boys. Not only did they lip-sync to the songs but they also danced it to. They did all the hand motions from the music videos. But they only did this for the girl-group songs; they completely ignored the boy bands. It was really funny...

What NOT to do when teaching a class...

So last week, we did introductions. I had the students draw about themselves and then they presented it in front of the classroom. Most where the typical, "my favorite food/color is...", "I like/don't like...", stuff about their families, etc.

But on Friday, this one student came up. There were lots of drawings on his paper. One of them, though, was of a guy getting shot in the head, and he said, "I like headshots" (He also write the finger and F* you on the page next to that.) It was so different from everyone else, and I was just so surprised by the way he said it, that I got into one of my laughing fits. I tried to hold it in, but I just couldn't stop laughing! I was even starting to tear up. It was so bad that I had to go into my office and my co-teacher had to take over. So afterward for the rest of the period, the class didn't take me seriously at all cuz of that. Whenever they'd talk and I'd try to discipline them, they would just make me laugh. It was so bad...

Cuteness in a Bottle

It's been so long since elementary school that I almost forgot how cute little kids are! So for the first week, we're doing introductions. They're asked to draw a picture of their life, hobbies, favorites, etc. Basically anything they want. And for one of my classes, these two girls made like a pact or something to only draw each other. And instead of introducing themselves, they came up and all they said was, "This is my best friend" about each other. So adorable!! ~^__^~